Operation Virus 2009

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Operation Virus quickly generated its own momentum and required no further attention from the Third Force. But as the momentum increased, the forces resisting the virus and its spread increased too.

Annual funding at one institute alone exceeded $3 billion. All the large multinational drug companies were in a race to find a cure, knowing that whoever found a cure would be able to rake in billions in profits each year, with the Nobel Prize in Medicine certain to be awarded to the individual scientists involved. By 2009, there were already more than thirty licensed anti-HIV drugs available to the health departments of governments around the globe. While not yet a cure, these drugs were making a difference. Where previously the life expectancy of an infected person was measured in months, not years, a twenty-year-old diagnosed in 2009 could expect to live a further fifty years, provided he or she religiously followed the course of the prescribed medication. And transmission of the virus from mother to unborn child had virtually been halted.

Since governments are known to be slow to react to creeping disasters, volunteers sprang into action everywhere. In Durban, Liesl Weber took up a post as a volunteer at the Aids clinic from which she would later be abducted. Meanwhile, Johann Weber was roped in to try to save a sixty-year-old transport company from going under.

The company had started as a one-man concern in 1960. The owner had bought a motorbike with a delivery box on the back and had started making deliveries in and around Johannesburg. In time his business grew until he was able to acquire trucks and trailers. On the advice of his accountant, he then converted the business into a company. The business grew until it had a fleet of more than five hundred trucks. Then things started going wrong.

In his affidavit, the managing director explained the firm’s decline into insolvency as follows: ‘Our drivers – we have six hundred on the payroll at any given time – are dying at the rate of sixteen to twenty a month. About fifty are off sick at any time, and of those who turn up for work, many are too weak to climb up into the trucks they have to drive. We’ve lost credibility with our customers because the trucks carrying their cargo are often stranded at the roadside because our drivers are too sick to continue. When our turnover fell, the banks stepped in and repossessed some of our assets.

‘All we need is time to negotiate with the union to allow us to employ more white drivers. There are many white drivers out of work. They don’t carry the virus.’

He pointed out that in 1990, the life expectancy of the average South African had been actuarially calculated to be seventy-two. By 2010, it was estimated, it would be forty-nine, and it would continue to fall steadily.

‘Mr Weber, I don’t see how this has anything to do with the case before me,’ the judge said when the witness took a sip from the glass of water on the witness stand.

‘If M’ Lord pleases,’ Weber said. ‘I’ll ask the witness to explain.’

‘Our workforce, M’ Lord,’ the witness said, ‘has been decimated by this virus, and it has done so in less than a lifetime. All we need is a few weeks to negotiate with the unions so that we can employ drivers who are free of the virus. But as things are now, we are not allowed to ask about an applicant’s HIV status when we interview prospective employees. We simply can’t afford to go on in this way. Otherwise we will lose the company and everyone will lose their jobs, including me.’

The judge postponed the matter for six months to allow the company to reach an agreement with the union.

The Third Force sat back and let Operation Virus run its course. It had found allies in unexpected places. A state president who turned a blind eye and refused to acknowledge the existence of the pandemic. A deputy president who believed that a shower would prevent the spread of the virus after unprotected sex. A minister of health who advocated the use of garlic and beetroot for prevention and refused to implement a concerted programme of containment. Drug dealers who stole ARVS to mix with their drugs. Together these were as deadly a combination as the mix of rat poison, heroin or cocaine and the stolen ARVS the drug dealers sold on the streets and in the clubs.

The government was killing its own people, and it was doing so publicly and without shame.

The government’s dereliction of duty first led to indignation, then ridicule, and finally concerted action. Non-governmental organisations sprang up everywhere and joined with the men and women of the health profession to combat the virus. They employed lawyers to take their case to court and finally, after a number of appeals, the government was ordered to roll out a state funded ARV programme. The infection rate soon dropped by 25%, and the transmission of the virus from mother to child dipped below 10%. The life expectancy of a person diagnosed with HIV also rose from a handful of years to thirty or forty. There was a glimmer of hope for the first time.

But the cost was immense. It was estimated that by 2015 it would cost R30 billion a year to battle the virus and cope with the devastation it left in its wake.